Reval :)

At the end of June I had an email announcing my second cycle of chartership revalidation had been successful. I often think about revalidation and much prefer the current regulations to the previous regulations. I chartered under the old regs but never revalidated under them; I tried, but the demands just didn’t fit into my busy working life as a long distance commuter. I have since revalidated twice under the new regs which proves how much more convenient they are. This is my first revalidation whilst working in HE. I blogged about my first revalidation (2015) here and also my original chartership (2010) here.

I submitted my portfolio on 27^th April and received the result exactly 2 months later. Although I was anxious to know whether my portfolio had been accepted, I found 8 weeks an acceptable wait. I’m happy revalidating every 12 months and feel a quick turnaround with the results is a key part of this.

'UXLibs in a Day'

Earlier this month, I attended ‘UXLibs in a day’, facilitated by Andy Priestner. I was lucky enough to have been given a place sponsored by CILIP West Midlands Member Network.  It was held in the library at Aston University and there were 25 delegates. It was brilliant, by far the most enjoyable and interesting library session I’ve ever been to. I was completely new to the concept of UX and this day was the perfect introduction. We learnt so much – it is impossible to recount it all within the confines of a blog post, but below are a few of my ponderings from the event.

HUG Summer Meeting 16

Last week was the annual Summer Meeting of the Heritage User Group, held at Conference Aston in Birmingham. I am a solo librarian and do not have many opportunities to meet other library people. I go to the HUG meetings once a year and really appreciate the networking opportunities it creates. This year, it seems networking opportunities are like busses – you wait ages for one and then two arrive at once! The HUG event was the day after the ARLG conference.

I attended my first HUG event in 2011 and they are always useful and interesting days. As always, the morning session featured a member of staff from ISOxford, the LMS developers. The latest information regarding the upcoming My Cirqas app was both interesting and useful. Although the app is free, usage will require Heritage licences so this is something for us to look into. We have long been considering upgrading out licence size and this may be the additional evidence required for our 'business justification' to be approved. 

#ARLG16 part 2: Attending

Last week I attended the ARLG 2016 conference, held at Conference Aston within Aston University. I attended for just one day, Tuesday 28^th July, and this blog post will record which sessions I attended and the overall experience of being a conference delegate.

The morning keynote speaker was Peter Kilcoyne, ILT director at Heart of Worcestershire College. He outlined a large scale project regarding blending learning within FE. Colleges are encouraged to participate in blended learning as a means of combatting teacher shortages, but creating online resources on a mass scale is expensive and time consuming. HoW college leads a consortium, which colleges may join for a fee. The idea is all member colleges will create resources which will be shared amongst fellow members, thus saving time (and therefore money) in the creation of online resources. The project was outlined from IT and senior management perspectives rather than a teaching perspective and this was reflected in the content. Coming from a college background, I could see the value in the project and it was interesting to learn of it, but at times I felt this particular presentation’s relevance to librarians was limited. Saying that, it was good to see a keynote session coming from an FE perspective – the majority of sessions appear to be aimed at HE practitioners. 

#ARLG16 part 1: Presenting

Recently, I have been lucky enough to present a workshop at the ARLG 2016 conference. This came about as a result of my winning ARLG’s Alison Northover Bursary, which I used to attend the 2014 ARLG conference.  I had such an amazing experience attending the conference that I was determined to contribute to the next one.

I kept my eyes open for the call for papers, submitted a proposal in December 2015 and in January 2016 found out it had been accepted. I was thrilled! The proposal was based around a book folding workshop, to be co-presented with an ex-colleague, Fran Heap. In the past, Fran and I had both used book folding to lead various library initiatives to engage users and raise the profile of the library. We felt we could share these experiences in the hope that other library staff may be interested.